Key terms and concepts

This is one of the most famous slogans in all philosophy. The problem is that it doesn’t accurately represent classical utilitarianism and was ultimately rejected by Bentham because it was misleading. It continues to mislead pupils today.

In an early work (A Fragment on Government, 1776) Bentham says, ‘it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong’ and he described this as a ‘fundamental axiom’. However, the phrase then disappears from his writings. There is some academic debate as to why this is but it seems that Bentham was trying to formulate his fundamental axiom in a way that wouldn’t cause problems. In 1829 he wrote,

Greatest happiness of the greatest number. Some years have now elapsed since upon a closer scrutiny, reason, altogether incontestable was found for discarding this appendage. 

Bentham rejected the wording because it would give licence to the majority to increase their happiness to the detriment of the minority. He gives as possible examples the Catholic minority in Great Britain and the Protestant minority in Ireland. The wording also leads to a conflict with the principle of maximising happiness.

The problem can be explained like this. Imagine there are three people and two possible courses of action, A & B. The amount of happiness that each course of action would produce is indicated by the number of As and Bs.

Person one: AAB
Person two: AAB
Person three: ABBBB

The greatest happiness for person one is achieved by following the A course of action. The greatest happiness for person two is also achieved by following the A course of action. The greatest happiness for person three is achieved by following the B course of action. So, the greatest happiness for the greatest number is achieved by following the A course of action. However, happiness is maximised by following the B course of action.

It is common for pupils to think that if it makes more people happier then utilitarianism says that is what you must do. Given that Bentham rejected the slogan for precisely this reason it is clearly an inaccurate characterisation of utilitarianism. It may be that doing the right thing will make the majority happier but it isn’t this that makes it the right thing to do. This misunderstanding is usually compounded by a misunderstanding of what Bentham means by ‘extent’ in the hedonic calculus.

Perhaps the best way to avoid these errors is to specifically explain why Bentham rejected the slogan.